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For some reason, managers have a tendency to direct their sellers’ career paths to what the team needs. This is when developing a collaborative employee development plan often falls by the wayside. According to a Forbes article, “helping your employees shape the future direction of their careers is a critical component to your company’s overall success”. The failure to put together a professional development plan for incoming sellers risks alienating tomorrow’s workforce.

The advantages of total employee development

According to the same Forbes article, staff development, while frequently ignored, offers a myriad of advantages to the forward-thinking management team. These include:

Building loyalty: When an employee feels as if they have “skin in the game”, they come to understand that the company’s success begets their own success. As such, devoting professional development resources to their success is an excellent way of building company loyalty.

The personal touch: Psychologists have long known that people respond well when someone takes a genuine interest in their future, so extending this fact of human nature to the boardroom helps build the bonds of loyalty between employee and employer.

Employee retention: Talented people rarely like to sit idly by on their laurels without a meaningful opportunity to advance in their career. A staff development programme ensures that that impulse is acted on in a way that benefits both the employee and the company.

These reasons are why savvy managers and directors take the time to create a professional development plan template that guarantees that nothing falls between the cracks when it comes time to managing your employees’ careers. The time and effort saved, as well as the efficiency it promotes, makes a development plan template a must-have in any manager’s toolkit.

When it comes to professional growth plan examples, there’s a range of suitable development plan examples readily available, including the one above. As such, taking employee development plan examples and harnessing them to your specific needs makes excellence business sense. An off-the-shelf development plan sample can help guide your sales career development efforts cost-effectively and efficiently.

Career development plans should be collaborative

Developing a career plan for a new employee demands a long-range view to visualise where that employee’s career development goals will intersect with the company’s needs three, five and even ten years down the line. Working with your employee on a career development plan therefore is an excellent way to bring about a sense of belonging for the employee, as well as serving as a way to map out a formula for long-term success with actionable goals that will lead to a realised career plan.

The building blocks of an excellent training plan

Simply stated, career development is an informed, systematic way of working with your employees so their career goals and your company’s future goals are entwined. Career development theories have long argued that instituting a career development plan template for new employees is an excellent vehicle for assuring new hires that your company’s investment in their effort is of a long-term nature.

A partnership in success

A collaborative career plan template is a powerful tool when used for employee retention and serves as a great career development plan example that every new seller can rely on as a benchmark to success. Career development begins on day one of a new person entering your workforce, and if you want to keep them happy, it is ongoing until the day that they leave.

Personal and individual development plans

It is the role of the manager to guide their new employees to meet their personal development goals. This personal development plan will help build the employee’s confidence, as well as adding value to the company, as they come to see their own role in the company defined and shaped through personal development plan examples that give meaning to their daily activities.

Bite-sized bits of knowledge

In formulating an individual development plan template for new hires, managers are wise to break down learning and development tasks into smaller increments that move beyond the mere personal development plan template into real world applications. As such, like any good teacher, the human resources manager must use an individual development plan example to gauge the employee’s level of competence before adding another element of responsibility to their plate.

Personal development goals: A mosaic of success

As individuals master the components of an individual development plan sample, they build the confidence that they need with an understanding of where their efforts pay off in the company’s larger picture. Guiding this awareness and building the careers of these employees at the same time is instrumental to a company’s long-term success.

Professional development goals

As the old adage says, “If you fail to plan, then you are planning to fail”. When it comes to establishing professional development goals, that failure is realised by not establishing benchmarks against which development goals can be measured. Examples of professional goals might include mastering the office software system within 90-days, or exceeding sales goals within a prescribed period. As such, don’t fail your new employees by failing to provide professional development goals examples that the employee can master before moving on to other professional goals examples to explore, master and conquer.

Leadership development plan

Career development plans are not just for new hires. Indeed, that initial development plan should be viewed as a living document that is subject to revisions and updates as the employee masters new skills and moves on to the next level of corporate responsibility. The same is true of those sales managers who are doing the training. It does not matter if a seller is making six dollars an hour or six figures a year, without ongoing goal setting, it is easy to lose sight of why they go to the office every day, and that is why a leadership development plan is necessary to keep their heads in the game. A personal development leadership plan gives professional focus to your company’s top echelon, while reaffirming to the remainder of your staff that there is always room for growth. Whether being guided by a leadership development plan template, or drawing up one’s own leadership development plan example, the effort will pay rich dividends in a focused workforce.